


between a rock and a hard place

by NeverEverFaceTheDark



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:41:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22131214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverEverFaceTheDark/pseuds/NeverEverFaceTheDark
Summary: "I always liked getting your little messages," he breathes, and she feels sick. Her hearts ache and she'sfurious.(pure smut with some character exploration thrown in, written pre-Spyfall part 2)
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who)
Comments: 45
Kudos: 397





	between a rock and a hard place

She's running. She's sprinting. 

There's a thingamabob and a multiscape and a dangerous plot to defuse. The universe to protect. And her friends to keep safe. 

The challenge feels intimately familiar but it sits impossibly heavy on her shoulders - fear beats through her veins, in quick spurts of four.

How could she have been so stupid?! She'd almost lost them. She'd almost been the cause of their fiery and absolute _obliteration_. 

And now she's had to send them off. Again. Like she'd been doing for all the time they'd known each other, not thinking. Not stopping to think. Not thinking to stop.

Yaz, right back into the forest that had scared her half to death. Graham and Ryan into the monster's den. And she's not with them. Not there to protect them.

She's running. She's being chased but if she could have won awards for sprinting in school she would have. She rips through rooms, searching for what she needs, sonic in hand.

She's fast, but the Master always was an underhanded cheat. 

Energy bursts into being just as she turns a desk drawer over onto the floor, lighting the room in a bright flash. 

"Gotcha," he says, smirk firmly etched onto Agent O's lips. 

The Doctor has not been able to untangle the murky mess of their timelines. She looks into his deep brown eyes and wonders. Had Missy really resented her so much? Had she hated him for what he'd asked of her?

The Master steps closer, and the Doctor backs up, right up to the wall. She's panting. He's not.

"Really, Doctor?" He taunts, throwing his arms wide in a symbolic gesture universal to all bi-manual species: no weapons in these hands. Mock harmless. 

He approaches like a predator, eyes glittering, his smirk growing into that big grin that she'd noticed between the talking and investigating and at the time had thought so sweet. Her skin prickles, grief sitting just beneath her breastbone. Fury churning her stomach. She stays right where she is.

"Aren't we friends?" The Master leans in, their noses nearly touch. She notices that he's a tiny bit taller than her for the first time in 3000 or so years. She searches his face. What is he referring to? What is he trying to weaponise?

A possessive hand lands on her waist. 

"I always liked getting your little messages," he breathes, and she feels sick. Her hearts ache and she's _furious_.

Her hand shoots out and grabs his wrist, twisting in a decidedly un-pacifistic hold, one her Venusian sensei would have clicked their tongue at. The Master crumples, laughing, giggling, the further she twists. She forces him backwards.

"So cranky!" he howls, stumbling. 

"You made me think my friends were dead!" she rages, in that way she hasn't yet - ever, in this body.

He stops, jerks his shoulder so that his bones strain to breaking point in her grip.

"What friends?" He hisses, "if they knew anything about you - what do you think they'd call you?"

She releases him. She can feel the snarl on her face, her lips pulled back, teeth bared - can't stop.

"Heh," he says, curling forward around his arm, dark eyes peering up through his floppy hair. "You're just upset that I won. You're so gullible, Doctor, always were."

She looks at him. "I liked O," she says, and can't stop it from sounding sad. 

He straightens.

"I know." His lips curl again, triumphant, and sickeningly soft. "Don't worry, baby," he says, as he puts his foot to the inside of hers. "That was all me." 

Very slowly he brings his other arm up and strokes the backs of three fingers down her cheek. 

It's a parody. Something like a shudder creeps up her spine. 

Why? She wants to ask. How? Why now? Who are you? 

"You haven't won," she says instead. "And I won't let you win," she takes a step forward, pushing, crowding him. "I've _always_ stopped you." He steps back.

"So tell me why you're doing this," she demands, forcing him towards the opposite wall. "Tell me where you came from. Better yet," she says, "tell me what's next. It's not like I won't figure it out. Save us both the hassle, why don't you?" 

The Master is about to collide when he lunges, wrapping an arm around her waist and twisting - slamming her into the wall instead. He uses his full weight to force the breath from her. He stays pressed close, scrabbling for her hand and threading his fingers through hers - to secure it. 

"Now why would I tell you that, Doctor," he says menacingly into her ear, as she gasps.

His hips have pinned hers, and it's about as bad as when Missy had snogged her - him for a full 23 seconds. Worse, actually, because it's like her body wakes up to him, becomes aware of the solid weight and definition of him, the familiar beats of his hearts, her nerves pinging. Worse, actually, because she can feel him, right through his trousers, pressing hot and hard into her hip. Some kind of hunger seems to grow in her very cells. It's different, it feels different.

He presses her harder into the wall. "You know I could've killed you anytime, right Doctor? You know those doors are deadlocked?" he says, in O's lovely voice.

She knows, but heat shoots down her spine anyway, electrifying, sharpening her senses by that infinitesimal extra degree - making her breath stutter. He chuckles low, self-satisfied, and the sound vibrates in her rib cage. She'd been monitoring all 687 potentialities and a fluctuating 27 to 49 different possibilities of escape. Pick a card, any card, and _snap_. It's so much harder faced with another Time Lord, but she's fast. She's really fast. There's currently five different reachable pressure points in his hand and his back and his leg and his foot that she could tap to incapacitate him for just long enough. 

She doesn't struggle.

He grinds into her slowly. 

"I bet you were thinking about this when texting your cute human boyfriend memes and kisses, huh?"

Shame and embarrassment and indignation rise up in her. "I wasn't! We weren't - !" she protests, high.

He pulls back just a bit. "I was," he says, smile wicked.

A throb starts between her legs at the thought, even as she aches again with anger and loss. She'd thought, she'd just thought that O - had liked her - A paralysing frustration swirls in her blood. 

The Master's rough hand is back on her hip, slipping inside her tuxedo coat. His fingers dig below her waistband to pull her blouse from her trousers. She lets him. Her skin tingles where he touches her. There's an impatience, an eagerness to him now that makes her pant. He makes quick work of her braces, grabs her trousers and her boxershorts and rips them down to her knees. She lets him.

He presses her back into the wall, hard. His mouth sits hot just below her ear, exactly where she still likes it, she finds out, soft hairs scratching at her skin. His belt clinks and his other hand reaches between her legs. She moves away instinctively - new, it's all new, sort of, not really but - but she can't move far. He drags his fingers through her folds and her hips jump. 

"Oooooh," he sighs into her ear. There's awe mixed in with his taunt, she thinks.

She's wet, she's very wet, she can feel it now, vaguely, as he rubs her softly, responding perfectly to her wriggling. Her legs tremble, her breathing's gone completely ragged. That's the practical part of being a woman she supposes, lots of natural lubrication. Very practical, going by the size of him, still grinding into her side.

It's different, really different, even having tried this out by herself a few times.

The Master slips his other hand up under her blouse and sports bra and puts it on her breast, kneading. It's a diffuse feeling, a heightener, like putting pepper in soup. He steps out of his shoes, and she hooks the waistband of his trousers with a few fingers and drags them down over his thighs until they fall. 

Their new relative heights are a small problem. She considers the desk and then the floor. Her thoughts cloud momentarily when he slips a finger inside her slowly and the back of her head hits the wall. He hisses as she feels herself stretch. It feels good, in combination with his thumb moving over her clit.

"That's tight," he says - too curious, calculated, gleeful, "haven't gone out for a spin yet?"

"Shut up," she warns him, trying to focus on the sensation of him inside her, the illusion of intimacy. 

"And I was so sure that pretty little thing would've gladly helped you out. What's her name? Yaz?"

Her eyes snap open, but it's too late.

"Shut up!" she hisses venomously. A piece of hatred flecks off her hearts and lands in her bloodstream.

"I felt that, Doctor," he gloats, pressing another finger into her and starting on a rhythm, his whole body rolling into her on his thrusts. "Not the only 'human' you 'like', am I? I just knew it was the girl."

He chuckles darkly and alarm bells go off in her head. She thinks back, replays their interactions - the Master's arms wrapped around Yaz's waist on the bike, the Master's little smile for Yaz at the casino, the way they'd stood tucked into each other's side. She hadn't even noticed at the time, hadn't even thought to remember. Stupid - stupid Doctor!

"Stay away from her," she says, low, and she means it, she really means it, rage behind her teeth. 

"So possessive!" The Master grins, his fingers unrelenting in sparking pleasure between her legs. "Won't let anyone else play with your -AH!"

She hadn't had much room to manoeuvre, but she's managed to jab his kidney hard enough that he'll feel a nasty twinge for weeks.

He groans at the pain, his forehead dropping onto her shoulder. Unfortunately, his hand on her also stops moving. She throbs, wound almost impossibly high.

"You really have gone feral, haven't you?" he spits after a moment, voice rising dangerously, and his hand disappears from between her legs, reappearing on her arm to drag her to the floor by her coat. She lets him.

He scrambles over her, briefly occupied by the battle with her trousers and boots until he's managed to drag at least one leg free. His breath is short with agitation. Arousal rushes through her veins. Gallons of clever little hormones dampening the visceral disgust response and - to be honest - a rather potent rational disgust response as well. Biology. She shakes her head sharply, trying to get rid of the buzzing corpse flies. 

The Master moulds himself to her front, angry grin to her throat, and she wonders idly whether she's going to need her respiratory bypass before this is over, his weight crushing her. It feels good though. Really good. He lines himself up and he feels warm and soft and hard and she _wants_. Gasps escape them both when he sinks into her. The burn of slight discomfort makes her muffle a hiss behind her teeth. He slows, working his way further in with shallow thrusts. It's strange, and good, and novel, feeling so full and stretched in a completely different way, everything so internal. She realises that in other circumstances this new experience would have had her smiling, instead of baring her teeth.

It will take only minutes, this part, as they rock into each other, she's pretty sure. She tries not to think, not to associate, not to remember - the smell of red grass or the taste of lipstick. The way O's texts had brightened her day - made her laugh. The terror and confusion in her friends' voices. She focuses on her telepathic defences, and the heat of his skin, the brush of his facial hair, the smoothness of his back under her fingers, the synchronisation of their movements, the sound of his soft open-mouthed groans. The way they must look.

It's him, it's him, it's him, it's them, it's them, again.

He's speeding up, forehead on her breastbone, hips snapping forward and that's good, feels good, hitting all the right places good, clenching up even further around him good. It's almost enough, it's almost, almost, she strains, teeth gritted, nails buried in his back, it's almost, it's almost.

It's enough. A small sound escapes her when she tips over the edge, all her muscles locking up. Pleasure going white-hot. Different and good. He speeds up further, which helps her chase the aftershocks, and follows almost instantly, shuddering.

Her vision un-tunnels, her ears come back online, she registers the uncomfortable hardness of the office's pseudo-wood laminate. Not that she's complaining, it is far from the worst kind of surface she's found herself on in situations such as these (how was she supposed to have known what super-fire ant nests look like?) But now that she's paying attention, the 21st century plastic smell makes her nose scrunch a little. They're both still sweating in half their clothes, just trying to catch their breath, though he must be having a better time of it as he's dead weight on her lungs again.

Then his panting morphs into something different: a breathy little laugh. Fury explodes in her chest instantly. She rolls him off her with a quick and powerful shove, which draws a muffled 'ouch!'. She gathers her boxershorts and trousers and pulls them back up, rolls into a standing position, re-clips her braces, tucks her shirt in and smooths down her coat. 

He just watches, still shaking from his noiseless laughter, languishing on his back, his hair a mess, a hand below his ribs, shirt rucked up with a bruise peeking out. She thinks she spots some blood on his hip. Completely dishevelled. No less dangerous. 

"Now what, Doctor?" he drawls.

She draws her sonic, looks at the readings.

"Now," she says sardonically, the corner of her mouth turning up, "you've been distracted for exactly the amount of time my friends needed to stop you."

He shoots up onto his elbows. "What-"

"See ya," she says. Then runs at the door, praying, hoping, the way she's good at, the way she's learned to be good at, that the plan's worked.

"Oh don't be stupid, Doc-" he shouts.

She bursts through.

His roar chases her all the way down the hall.


End file.
